On 26 September 2022, NASA’s DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos, shifting its trajectory round its father or mother asteroid, Didymos. The mission was the primary of a duo of craft set to go to the binary asteroid system in an try to study extra about how we’d shield our planet from asteroids, ought to one be on a collision course.

The follow-up mission, involving a spacecraft referred to as Hera constructed by the European Area Company (ESA), is because of launch in October. It would examine the collision’s aftermath utilizing a collection of detectors and can carry two CubeSats referred to as Juventus and Milani. However earlier than it might probably depart Earth, Hera should bear a barrage of checks at ESA’s European Area Analysis and Know-how Centre within the Netherlands to make sure it might probably cope with the rigours of launch and house.

Heli Greus, the mission’s product assurance and security supervisor, is overseeing checks that embrace excessive noise and vibrations to simulate launch circumstances, and a thermal vacuum take a look at, by which Hera will face the acute temperature and different fluctuations that it’s going to expertise in house. If it passes, Greus would be the final particular person to signal the probe off for launch. However, she says, in each launch marketing campaign, there are at all times surprises.